


stronghold

by scalamander



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Domestic, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, human!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scalamander/pseuds/scalamander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas losing his grace was something Dean could honestly say he'd never thought too much about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stronghold

It’s one of those things Dean never really thought about. Well, why would he? Sometimes it would cross his mind, the small hummingbird’s flit of an idea, but it would always fade in half a second because hey, they were fighting the Apocalypse.

 

But if he’d had the time and - to be perfectly honest - if he ever _really_ considered that Cas might lose his grace, he would’ve made an effort to think of all those little things. He would’ve tried to imagine how Castiel would look middle-aged, with grey hair and wrinkles and maybe sagging a bit around the middle. Dean could’ve at least attempted to guess what it would be like - a Cas who went to the bathroom, who slept and had actual dreams; a Cas who ate and showered and stank and sweat like the rest of them.

 

It’s something Dean can honestly say he ignored.

 

Every year Castiel becomes a little more human. He doesn’t say anything about it to either Dean or Sam, but they both notice anyway. Every once in a while, Cas catnaps. He snacks on bits of grapes and celery here and there, at first explaining that he wants to be a part of meals with the Winchesters and Bobby, but eating becomes more regular as time goes on. None of them say a word.

 

Gradually, Dean shows Cas how to shave his suddenly growing stubble and brings him to the barber for a haircut. At first it’s very slow, maybe only once every ten months. Obvious enough that it needs taking care of but still something they can disregard on a daily basis. But soon Dean’s driving Cas once every few months (driving, because angel-zapping is more draining than ever and Dean doesn’t need Castiel laid up in bed for four days, exhausted and cranky). Secretly, Dean loves how fast Cas’s stupidly thick hair grows. He’ll never admit it, especially now, as they all watch their angel slip closer to humanity.

 

So, it shouldn’t really be a surprise when it happens.

 

The day Castiel’s grace finally disappears is four years after the end of everything - after his brief stint as God and after the Leviathan problem had finally, _finally_ finished.

 

He’s standing at the kitchen sink, head tilted consideringly like a puppy and with the eyes to match. This is his second favorite spot in the house (after the bed, curled up with Dean, as it should be). The window overlooks the ramshackle yard of his and Dean’s ramshackle house, and it’s a little drafty and worn down but it’s theirs and it’s home.

 

It’s just after 8am.

 

Dean remembers walking in. He remembers sliding his hands around Castiel’s waist, hands possessive over his hipbones, his mouth finding the back of his neck and the juncture of his shoulder; that secret place just below his ear. Dean remembers pressing a kiss into Cas’s dark hair, remembers walking to the coffee pot, remembers - can’t and won’t ever forget - the sudden cry from behind him.

 

It’s almost inhuman in it’s agony; a physical pain but with so many layers underneath. It’s shock and grief and longing and horrible, irreversible loss, all wound out of Cas’s throat in a way Dean’s never heard before. On instinct Dean goes for his gun. It isn’t there, of course, on his hip or, like Sam, at the back of his pants. He whirls around as he scrambles, not sure what he’s expecting to see other than some kind of otherworldly danger.

 

Instead, he sees Castiel bent double; one hand pushing into his chest and the other white-knuckled on the sink’s edge. Dean watches Cas sink slowly on his knees, hand unmoving over his sternum while the other falls in a fist to the floor. In two strides Dean is beside him, on his knees, too, green eyes searching Cas’s face. The angel is clutching his chest like he’s been punched and panting like he’s run a marathon. When Dean is finally able to catch his eye, he knows. Cas’s big, beautiful eyes are filled with tears and wide with shock and intertwined with all that, is despair. And those eyes that always stunned Dean with their luminous blue irises, even in the dark, even on those hardest, longest days - the eyes that betrayed Castiel as something other than a man in a tie and trench coat - are dim and soft sky blue.

 

Without any doubt, Dean knows.

 

“Cas-”

 

Okay, he’s not sure what to say. He takes Castiel’s face in his hands and thumbs away tears and tries to tell him _I know, it’s okay, I know_ with his fingertips.

 

Cas pants, close to hyperventilation and shaking from the blow.

 

When he speaks, his voice is rough and gravelly and torn. “It’s gone. My grace is gone.”

 

\- - -

 

It takes a while to get used to Graceless Cas. While it was dwindling, they got a peek into what life with Human Cas would be like but now, Dean thinks, they weren’t wholly prepared _(holy prepared - get it?)_.

 

Life will Graceless Cas is new and fraught with danger. Although he’s been living amongst humans for millennia, and with the Winchesters specifically, intimately, for years, he never really paid attention to the little things. Because let’s face it, what’s a hot pan on a hot stove to an angel of the lord? Why worry about bumps and scrapes, colds, runny noses, hunger pains, gas pains, diarrhea, and morning ablutions when you can heal minor injuries, never eat or sleep, never sweat, never bleed, never change? And sure, Castiel had been human for a brief time but really, had they noticed? Dean thinks somewhere, though they never said it aloud, he and Sam never expected him to stay that way. Soon enough, Cas was himself again - the powerful aged creature of Heaven, and the Winchester brothers forgot.

 

Dean tries to remember now, but fails.

 

\- - -

 

It’s the little things that catch them by surprise.

 

The first time Cas gets a paper cut he drops the offending papers (a gas bill, by the way, and they’re getting completely swindled) and stares at his left hand. Right there, on the fingertip of his middle finger, is a small blossoming line of blood that stings like a motherfucker.

 

Dean laughs and takes care of it: shows Cas where the band-aids and Neosporin are; shows him how to wash his hands, just to be safe. He’ll be damned if they’ve come all this way only to have Cas die of an infection, or sepsis by paper cut.

  
When they lay in bed that night, Cas curls up closer than usual, his hands gripping Dean’s sides tight and his knobbly knees poking into Dean’s thigh and hip. Dean wraps his arm around the body by his side and presses his lips unconsciously to Castiel’s hairline. He knows a paper cut is nothing, really. But he also knows what it signals, what it says about this new, completely and utterly human, Castiel.

 

A brief, panicking thought spears his mind. _Just a paper cut now, but it’s all downhill from here_. The image of Cas, grey-haired and sickly in some half-rate nursing home, legs and arms and fingers bandaged and wrapped, flash before his closed eyelids.

 

_No,_ he thinks violently. _We’re not fucking there yet._

 

Dean pulls Cas closer and buries his face into his hair.

 

\- - -

 

The next few months are trying for them both by virtue of the fact that they live together. Sam and Bobby, bless them, only ever stop by, and while it’s strange for them and yeah, they struggle to adjust, too, it’s just not the same. 

 

For example: Dean forgets Castiel no longer has his otherworldly strength, and still asks him to lift or move or shift things that are impossible even for he and Sam together. Cas, sometimes on his own instinct, will start to move, arms outstretched, ready to pick up the back of the Impala to get it out of the muddy side-yard or transport a stack of unpacked moving boxes (come on, it’s been years but they’re trying goddamn it). There’s a moment of embarrassment for both of them, but Dean’s turns into sympathetic longing and Cas attempts to cover up his dismay by wordlessly getting the jack, or taking the heaviest box his human arms can lift. It doesn’t work well, but they get on.

 

Cas’s palate is more human-like, too. (Dean is secretly grateful. He knew angels had no need to eat but come on, even at half power Castiel only ever ate near-flavorless fruits and veggies. Dean tried, and failed, not to be personally offended.) As the summer weather builds, Dean cracks out the bar-be-que and grills up steak, burgers, sausages. Sam and Bobby come by for beers in the long evenings and Dean, grill-master extraordinaire, is ready to serve. 

 

It’s mid-June. Bobby and Sam are looking over the two cars by the back shed (a 1957 Chevy Bel Air and a crappy 80s truck - a Chevy too. Dean’s got brand loyalty, okay?) when Cas comes out from the house, barefoot and wearing one of Dean’s old Led Zep shirts, with two beers in hand.

 

He gives Dean a cold, sweating bottle and leans against the side of the grill. He watches Dean inspect the burgers; observes how Dean knows from years of practice that they still have a ways to go; glances over to the uncooked patties on a plate by the skilled chef’s other side.

 

“One for me,” he says without preamble. “With cheese. But not American.”

 

Dean blinks. He looks at Cas, then to the burgers cooking merrily away, then back to Cas. He nods.

 

“Sure. Cheddar’s in the fridge.”

 

When Castiel comes back with a pack of generic yellow shredded cheese, Dean pulls him close by the waist and kisses his jaw, that spot behind his ear, the side of his neck - anywhere he can reach and get away with while there’s company close by. Cas lets him.

 

Burgers become a regular fixture.

 

And sometimes, by habit, Castiel will attempt to travel the angel way. Dean can always tell: the features of Cas’s face will become blank and his posture frozen, waiting to resume action in a different place or time. It always only lasts for a moment, a mere couple of seconds, but it is enough. His eyes fall downward, his body - no longer a vessel but Cas’s own beating heart and flesh and bones - slumps forward, and he leaves the room every time. Dean suspects Castiel goes to their bedroom or the shed at the back of the yard. Sometimes Dean thinks he cries; at other times, rages. Dean doesn’t want to ask. Not selfishly (well okay, maybe a _little)_ , but mostly because he can see the pain of this new grace-less former angel and can do nothing to fix it.

\- - -

Seven months after losing his grace, Castiel breaks his first bone.

 

Dean gets the call at work (Tuesday, a double shift at the body shop in town).

 

“Dean, it’s Cas - I’m so sorry man,” Sam stutters, out of breath and frantic. “He’s in the hospital - he’s okay, I mean, he broke his leg - okay well technically _I_ broke it, but…” Sam takes a breath, exhales loudly into the other end. “He told me to leave, but… but Dean, I think you need to be there.”

 

Dean leaves immediately.

 

When he arrives at the hospital, it’s to find Cas in a shared room but - thank God - alone  in a bed by the window. His face doesn’t turn even though Dean _knows_ Cas knows he’s there.

 

Even though he’s aware Cas has been in a hospital once before, that brief human-time so many fights ago, Dean never had to see him as he is now. In the bed, wearing the horrible pale blue hospital-issue gown, hooked up to an IV and heart monitor and all those other beeping machines, left leg in a cast that’s suspended in one of those slings Dean recognizes from medical dramas but’s never actually seen in real life, Castiel looks impossibly small and fragile. When Dean walks around the side of the bed, breaking Castiel’s view of outside the window, he sees how pale and drawn Cas really is.

 

“What happened?”

 

Cas’s Adam’s apple bobs a few times in slow succession. He avoids looking directly at Dean at first. Dean keeps quiet; keeps his eyes on Cas’s face until after long moments, those dim blue eyes look into his.

 

“I was helping Sam move boxes from the attic,” he says robotically. “I was on the bottom rung, Sam was coming down. The box slipped - or Sam slipped - I fell back but my foot was still on the ladder. Sam fell on top of me.” Cas shrugs. “The ambulance ride was an experience. EMT’s are very efficient.”

 

Dean squeezes his eyes shut and takes a short deep breath. As he opens his eyes, Castiel’s fingers reach across the space between the bed and Dean, where he is crouched on the balls of his feet on the dingy hospital linoleum. Cas winds his fingers with Dean’s and somehow manages to shrug with his lips instead of his shoulders. Dean brings those bony fingers to his lips, lingers there for a moment, absorbs the chill of Castiel’s cold skin and breaths heat onto them.

 

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

 

Cas makes that strange mouth-shrug again, but his eyes look a little brighter than before.

 

“They said I can be discharged soon.”

 

Dean smiles. “Good. I have the truck - you can lay out in the back.”

 

The fingers in between Dean’s tighten and release.

 

“I’m going to need crutches,” Cas says, and Dean laughs.

 

“We’ll get those,” he promises, “and painkillers, too. Don’t worry, I have experience with broken bones.”

 

For the first time in a long time, Castiel’s small nostalgic smile seems like the real deal.

 

\- - -

 

It takes a while to get Cas situated in bed, but they manage it eventually. He’s half-up against the headboard with his cast-incased leg on top of the sheets.

 

“Dean,” he complains for the eightieth time, “it _itches_. I can’t _scratch it, Dean._ ”

 

Dean laughs as he sets a glass of water on the side table and lines up Cas’s pill bottles in a neat row beside it, because he knows his haphazard organization is no organization at all, and he doesn’t need Castiel any more irritable than he already is.

 

“Get used to it, dude. It only gets worse.”

 

Cas, for Christ sakes, actually _pouts_. Luckily, Dean finds him absolutely, astonishingly, enthrallingly adorable.

 

Dean shuts off the main light and slips underneath the covers. Beside him, just too many inches away, Cas lays still and unmoving.

 

“Dean.”

 

Carefully, Dean flops over to face the man on the other side of the bed. Cas is still very still, but Dean can see his eyes open and searching in the dim light from the shaded windows.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Dean pauses. After a minute he musters, “Um… what?”

 

Cas shifts restlessly, as much as he is able, and stumbles, “It’s been - an adjustment. I - I know I’m not as useful as I was before. I’m slower and weaker and I can’t - I mean, I have to take the _car_ \- but -” he heaves a sigh. “It’s difficult. I’ve been… emotional. And contrary. I apologize. It’s not easy for you, either.”

 

_Ah_.

 

Dean slides up to sit against the pillows as Cas does. He turns to face him and finds that, for the first time in, well, seven months, Castiel is pinning him with that old familiar intensity, head cocked slightly to one side. Dean shakes his head.

 

“You shouldn’t feel sorry, Cas.” 

 

And Dean is insistent because he knows this man - because he knew him as an angel and yeah, it’ll take some time to get used to but underneath it all, underneath the burgers and the paper cuts and the broken bones, Cas is still himself. Castiel the millennium-old servant of Heaven, the warrior, the soldier, the rebel, the loyal friend. Castiel, whose first kiss with Dean was sweet and unpracticed but so, so eager; who chose to live in this run-down old house in the middle of nowhere instead of returning to Heaven, because after all they’d seen and fought and killed, by God they _could_. This is Castiel, whose body was once Jimmy Novak’s but is now only his - irrevocably, irreversibly, permanently his; this body that shrugs and smiles and yeah, apparently breaks on occasion. This body, those eyes - those blue, blue eyes: from where Jimmy and then Castiel the Angel and now Cas the Human Man have seen from the beginning **,** and see now, the very heart and soul of Dean Winchester.

 

Dean thinks all of this and more in a matter of seconds.

 

But he’s never been very good with words, and in any case, how could speaking do justice to what he feels instinctually and primally in every atom of his being?

 

Castiel remade him from Hell, all those years ago. He told Dean, when they were new - craving and cautious at the same time, holed up in another shitty motel that smelled like smoke and greasy take-out - about descending into the pit to find him. Those long fingers stroked Dean’s sweat-damp skin as he softly, not quite whispering but so, so gently, told Dean, “ _I_ know _you, Dean Winchester. I found you in a thousand, million pieces and I put you back together. Atom by atom, muscle to bone, skin and hair. And when I was done I took your soul and bound it back together. I know every part of you._ ” And when he was quiet, he used those hands and that mouth and showed Dean exactly how true it was.

 

Now, Dean looks into those slightly dimmer blue eyes and he knows without a doubt that Cas can see it all on his face.

 

“You were an _angel_ , Cas. You’re older than the Earth, for fuck’s sake.” With one hand he grabs Cas’s neck, fingers splayed and holding him tight, while the other finds those delicate fingers and grips them with as much solidarity as he can manage. “However hard you think it is for me is a thousand times worse for you.”

  
Cas blinks and looks down, down at their fingers intertwined on the bedspread, his Adam’s apple bobbing again and again.

 

“Hey,” Dean says gently, and good - Castiel looks up, finds his eyes, and doesn’t leave. Dean smirks reassuringly. “You get the best of both worlds. You got your stint as an angel and now you get to enjoy the perks of humanity.”

 

Cas snorts. “Like broken legs?”

 

Dean’s smirk widens, his voice lowers into coaxing as his fingers trial slowly up from Castiel’s hand, across his arm, and up to his shoulder. “Like excellent painkillers. Like taking double showers, and sleeping in on weekends, and waking up to morning blowjobs.”

 

As he speaks, Dean moves in closer to Cas’s face until their lips are a hair’s breadth apart. One of Castiel’s eyebrows rises, unimpressed.

 

“I have already experienced ‘morning blowjobs’,” he says. Dean can practically see the air quotes and he grins, truly, happily, against Castiel’s mouth.

 

“There you are,” he mutters, and with no more preamble their mouths are together, soft and dry - though not for long - and Dean revels in the taste and touch that haven’t been the same in so long. When Cas sighs and opens his mouth, when Dean runs his tongue along the length of Castiel’s and traces the shape of his teeth, he realizes he can taste it, that something different. As Cas strokes Dean’s tongue with his own, Dean realizes that this _thing,_ this light and soft different something,is pure and unfettered _hope_. It’s small: it’s the slightly brighter sheen in Cas’s eyes and the real, honest smile - no matter how small - at the hospital. It’s just a seed and it’s so, _so_ delicate but Dean presses desperate against this injured man and _believes_ he can taste better things to come.

 

When they finally pull apart, Castiel’s hands are tight on Dean’s arms and Dean’s thumbs are absentmindedly stroking Cas’s cheeks. 

 

“See?” Dean says, a little breathless. “You’ve been doing the human-thing for a while already.”

 

Cas doesn’t say anything. Instead, he runs his fingers through Dean’s short hair and kisses every part of Dean he can reach. 

 

They spend the night wrapped up together (as much as they can, anyway). When they wake up throughout the night it’s to more kissing, more cradling, more touching; and when the sun comes up in the early dawn, Dean wakes Cas up in that old familiar human way.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, so all concrit is appreciated. Originally posted on tumblr.


End file.
